A second-generation Italian American inspired by a sojourn in southern Italy, Cianne Fragione makes mixed-media abstractions that seem to contain bits of the old country. The layered, heavily worked surfaces give an archaeological vibe to the pictures in Gallery Neptune & Brown’s “Dancing the Tarantella.” The predominantly light-colored drawing-paintings suggest walls craggy with centuries of plaster and paint.

The local artist’s work also incorporates words, paper shreds and bits of fabric. A series inspired by an older Italian woman who befriended Fragione includes “Blue Dress on the Balcony,” in which a scrap of sumptuous color gleams like a patch of azure sky on a gray-skied day. More mythologically, a wisp of lace curls through a picture named for the tale in which Zeus, in the form of a swan, has his way with Leda, a mortal woman.

Fragione was formerly a professional dancer, and the show’s title refers to the communal dance in the Calabrian village where she lived for a time. The artist doesn’t explicitly represent dancing, but there’s motion in the loose gestures drawn with pencil and crayon or incised into pigment.

Join International Arts & Artists (IA&A) for Art in Context: Italy, a discussion on how contemporary artists in Italy are changing perceptions of Italian art and culture, and the broader socio-economic conditions impacting creative work and partnerships.Panelists include:

Manuela Dimuccio Gonzalez, Youth-to-Youth (Y2Y) Steering Committee co-Chair at the World Bank Group and former Event Coordinator at the Italian Cultural Society of Washington, DC.

The Art in Context series is part of IA&A’s International Partnership Initiative, developed in 2013 to prioritize international work between U.S. arts institutions and their counterparts abroad by creating a forum for discussion and discovery among leaders in the arts, academic, diplomatic, and policy communities. Art in Context showcases artists and cultural organizations in the broader social, economic, and political context in which they exist.

Anonymous Was A Woman is an unrestricted $25,000 grant for exceptional women artists 40 years of age and older. Each year, the award recognizes ten artists at a critical juncture in the development of their work. You were nominated by a member of a national group of arts professionals who will remain anonymous to you. Your nomination is a significant acknowledgement of your artistic achievement, and we congratulate you.

Two of Carol Barsha’s large florals are in Gallery Neptune & Brown’s “Ladies First,” and their red blooms provide much of the color in the eight-woman show. There also are vivid abstractions by Cianne Fragione, rendered with nearly as many as materials as hues. But most of the artists are more concerned with lines, whether executed with ink, pencil or bronze.

Janis Goodman’s intricate drawings include one with an off-center flurry of cross-hatching, suggesting a tornado or a dense thicket, and several that depict reflected light on gentle tides. The latter pictures complement detailed yet stark abstractions by Linn Meyers, each of which punctuates a similarly rippling expanse with a perfect circle. Stretched across two sheets of paper, Beverly Ress’s pale “Pink Wing” seems as much a minimalist exercise as an ornithological study. (One of Barsha’s nests would have fit well with this grouping.)

The only sculptures are by Raya Bodnarchuk, who contributed small bronzes of standing human figures, as well as a seated, streamlined and smiling cat that is one of the array’s crowd-pleasers. Yet Taz Ichikawa’s drawings have a sculptural quality, whether they employ shadows and modeling to simulate 3-D qualities or, as in “Inspiration,” contrast such techniques with unadorned pencil swoops. The piece illustrates the ability and the desire to expand a single stroke into a full work of art.

Ladies First On view through July 16 at Gallery Neptune & Brown, 1530 14th St. NW. 202-986-1200. neptunefineart.com.

Cianne Fragione and Seth Adelsberger push the limits of their respective media to reveal the immediacy and spontaneity involved in the creative process.

Using paint, textiles, paper, and assemblage, Fragione creates work that combines three narrative elements: her childhood growing up in an Italian immigrant neighborhood in Connecticut, her previous dance career in ballet and jazz, and her visual art training in the San Francisco Bay Area during the beat and funk movement.

In the larger context of the art world, however, I concur with Phil Davis's curatorial remarks that accompanied an exhibition at Gateway Arts Center “… Fragione’s art pours over with the physical material of paint and mark-making as an act of exploration. Her complex use of color and her layered covering-up of forms create images that reveal themselves slowly and with great reward. An inheritor of the San Francisco Bay Area School of abstract expressionism, her paintings “… are at once of this time and also firmly rooted in the uniquely American abstract expressionist tradition.”

Baltimore-based artist Seth Adelsberger questions traditional notions of painting and printmaking through the use of unusual materials and rearrangement of the standard steps in artmaking.

"[Adelsberger’s] work is very strong visually and aesthetically. His paintings really grab your eye. But they're also very interesting conceptually and historically. They relate back to artworks done in the late 1950s and 1960s by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Frank Stella, and that gives what Seth is doing a lot of heft." ---Kristen Hileman, Curator of Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art

Please join me and come see: Perfume #57 a new piece from the Pocket Full of Promises series.

February 4, 2016 - March 13, 2016

Opening Friday, February 4, 2016 6-8pm

Wings from Chains invited artists to consider women’s roles and responsibilities in society – yesterday, today, and tomorrow – and to explore the transformation from oppression to liberation, shame to pride, and drudgery into art. Wings From Chains is timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the Women's Caucus for Art (WCA) in Washington, DC.

In conjunction with Renée Stout: Tales of the Conjure Woman, the inaugural exhibition of the Alper Initiative for Washington Art features 16 woman artists from the Baltimore/Washington region who formed Stout's artistic cohort. These artists influenced Stout, were influenced by her, or provided support to Stout since she arrived in DC in 1985. The exhibition demonstrates how artists rely on each other’s support for their work to flourish. It also provides an interesting perspective on the workings of the Washington art world over the last 30 years.

The American University Museum is located at 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC

Art Educators' Exhibition: In Practice

July 16 — August 22, 2015Opening reception Thursday, July 16, 5-7pm

July 16- August 22, 2015

Exhibition of teaching artist with the focus on their studio practice.

Selected by juror, Brett John Johnson, Director of Visual Arts at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA, the exhibition features thirteen teachers from elementary, middle and high schools, as well as college educators, who produce impressive works in a variety of media, exploring a wide rage of subjects.

Creation arises from the dissolving of forms and concepts. The artwork in this exhibition represents the dissolving of contemporary beliefs though a diverse array of subject matter. Dissolution of belief establishes the foundation for Transformation. This exhibit establishes the strong correlation of end to its counterpart, beginning. This forges an alternative way of seeing for the viewer.

Curated by Maxine Taylor, Jessica Damen and Pat Dennis Giroux. It features regional artist and Sondheim prize applications. In addition to opening and closing receptions, there will be weekly artist talks during the exhibit, on Thursdays from 7 - 8 pm. All events are free to the public.